there aren’t jobs in computers for americans

did you know that if you are an american in the computer field, there are a lot less jobs available than americans who have the education and training to fill them? this has been true for years prior to this recession. i graduated cornell university in 2004 with a double major in computer science and mathematics and could not find a job in my field, because the amount of computer science graduates is many times higher than the number of job openings for them. the same holds true for people with more experience in the computer field: way more people like that than jobs for them. and another thing: foreign countries like india and china send a lot of their young people to our universities or to their own universities to study computers, creating even more of a surplus of people educated in computer science compared to the much smaller number of job openings. so, what has happened?

the i.t. or hi-tech or computer industry, whatever you want to call it, has been hiring foreigners as temporary guest workers. these workers, primarily from india but also from other countries, are temporary, do not get good benefits or a good salary, but they do get to come here to the united states on a temporary basis and work here, and then they have to go back to their home countries again. meanwhile, the hi-tech industry has for years been propagating myths that americans are not good enough for these hi-tech jobs and that they need foreigners to do them, while at the same time laying off american workers. at the times that they were hiring more people than they laid off, this still did not keep pace with the numbers of new computer science graduates, people like me. the hi-tech industry has also for years encouraged as many people as possible to try to pursue careers in computers and study computer science, in order to create this surplus of qualified applicants to choose from. the whole dot-com bubble in the late 1990s was a part of this, but that strategy continues to this day. educational institutions are still churning out too many graduates in this field, just as they were doing 8 years ago. the primary government program utilized by the hi-tech industry to hire foreigners is the h1-b visa program, although they also use other programs. and guess what? they have plenty of lobbyists in washington, d.c. and a whole lot of influence.

what are the objectives of the hi-tech industry? like almost any other industry, they want cheaper labor. they do not want unionized workers because unionized workers have higher salaries and more benefits. they would rather hire temporary workers than permanent ones for the same reason: they can pay lower salaries with less benefits. and this is also why they seek out foreigners, and why they have successfully gotten the government to intervene on their behalf to help them get cheap foreign labor to come right here to the united states of america and replace our own american workers. people have to train their replacements. as for me, i haven’t even been able to get an entry-level job in the industry, since it is so competitive. like many people in the computer field, i am better with computers than i am with people, and lack social skills, so i am not good at job interviews, since job interviews are primarily social interaction. so for those employers who are hiring people the old-fashioned way instead of hiring a bunch of cheap foreign labor, they have a huge number of applicants to a small number of jobs, and they look for any excuse to disqualify an applicant. lacking social skills is one such excuse, and another is lack of any work experience in the industry. but how do you get an entry-level job in an industry where most entry-level jobs go to foreigners and the ones that are left are very highly competitive?

i would say that the hi-tech industry is succeeding in its efforts to create a large pool of qualified labor that they can hire from, and to find the cheapest labor it can and make the highly qualified people duke it out for the few jobs that are actually good.

back in the 1990s, there were plenty of high-paying jobs in the hi-tech field, mostly in the dot-com boom, and there were actually way more openings than qualified applicants. this is why the industry found it so necessary to find more labor, and started resorting to hiring foreigners and bringing them to the united states. at that time, it actually made sense, since there truly was a shortage of labor and a surplus of job openings. but times changed dramatically around the year 2000 or so, and ever since, the hi-tech industry has had the upper hand, once all the unprofitable dot-coms went out of business and all their employees were suddenly unemployed. the united states department of labor has highly inaccurate statistics in their publications, because they do not have enough staff or funding to get more accurate statistics. and so, the official government publications about hi-tech jobs often misstate things and say that salaries are higher than they actually are, or that there are more jobs than there actually are. this is because the government is relying on statistics provided to it by the industry and does not verify them, and the industry purposefully lies to the government for its own benefit. then, when job seekers are looking at pamphlets by the department of labor about various types of jobs, the information they find is quite inaccurate.

for more information, there is a website and a blog about all of this, both put together by someone who actually does have work experience in this field but cannot find a job, and who has done all the research about this situation.

anyway, i have one piece of advice for any people young enough to still choose their career path: stay the fuck away from computers! seriously! majoring in anything that has to do with computers is a bad idea. do not study computer science or information technology or anything like that. if you do, you will be totally fucked and never be able to find a job in that field. it is as useless as majoring in philosophy or some other field that has no actual jobs. just trust me on this. majoring in computer science is a dead end, and you will have no career unless you do something crazy like moving to bangalore, india to help educate the people there about computers. and the people in bangalore, india already know too much, and there are too many of them who know too much, and they make hardly any money at all doing jobs that americans used to do. we cannot stop outsourcing jobs physically to other countries, like jobs that go to bangalore, india. but we can stop outsourcing jobs to foreigners through u.s. government programs that enable companies to bring foreigners here as cheap labor. i would call them indentured servants but their status is lower than the status of indentured servants. indentured servants got to stay in america once their temporary period of being the equivalent of slaves had expired. people brought here through the h-1b visa program are temporary guest workers who have to go back to their country of origin afterwards, and they never get to move here permanently and become citizens. that does not mean that they do not ever try to do that, and end up as illegal immigrants. many of them do, in fact, end up as illegal immigrants, although they ironically got to this country legally in the first place. the whole system is messed up. it is pretty much the same thing as employers that hire a bunch of undocumented illegal immigrants to work as cheap labor illegally, except this is a government program and it is all perfectly legal, a program created by the united states government to take away good high-paying american jobs and turn them into low-paying jobs for foreigners. ideally, this h-1b visa program would be completely eliminated, but instead, it might actually be expanded. again.

there is good news, though. hilda solis, nominee for labor secretary, has indicated that she would allow americans to compete for all jobs offered to foreigners through the h-1b visa system, and not let american employers discriminate against their fellow americans in favor of foreigners. this would not solve the problem of there being many times more qualified applicants than available positions, but it would make things a little more fair for people who are trying to get a job. as for the question of job creation, president-elect barack obama has a goal of creating 3.5 million new jobs, and is open to all ideas from everyone about how to do that.

and i do currently have a job, and it is on a computer. typing. it is called data entry. it is not exactly what i studied in college, or what my career plans were or are. i have had this job since mid-2007, since a little after 3 years after graduating from cornell with the computer science and math double major. prior to my current job i spent a year and a half unemployed, applying to all sorts of jobs in my field that i could find, mostly locally. and the job i had right before being unemployed did not last very long so i would not even consider it a real job. the amount of total hours of work i did in that job was incredibly small, about 1 day’s worth of work, but spread out over 2 or 3 weeks, with me not working most days. i was only supposed to work when my boss called me on the phone to come in and do something; i was an extra person that was only supposed to come in when everyone else was too busy to handle something, and they made very little use of me. my previous job to that, which was my first job after college, was one i had for the fall 2004 semester working at the local community college as a math tutor, and i only worked 5 hours a week, since the math tutoring center only has one person working there at any given time, and most of the time actual math professors or the guy in charge of the math tutoring center are there to do the job. jobs i had prior to that? i worked at a laundromat, doing laundry one summer. that job is completely useless on a résumé. the other job was working on a website for cornell university’s dining services, where i mostly just got text versions of stuff in email and then turned it into nice-looking html pages where everything was laid out in big tables... it was almost all menus that would show all of the food served at each major campus eatery throughout a given week. i worked about 1 hour a week on that job, for about 2 and a half years. that was my first job. so anyway, if you are looking at how many jobs i have had where i am not working some ridiculously small number of hours a week, i have only had 2. the first real job was at a laundromat doing laundry, and that was the most horrible job ever, like working in a sweatshop. the second real job is the one i have now, doing data entry, and it is much better, but it is still low-paying. anyway, my advice to everyone is: do not pursue a career in the computer/i.t./high-tech industry! too many people are already doing it, and there are not enough jobs to go around! cornell has consistently been ranked as one of the top 5 computer science schools in the country. if someone like me from cornell, valedictorian of his high school, cannot get a job in this field, i doubt many other people could get one either. do not make the same mistakes i did. as for me, i will do my best to get a better job, one in the hi-tech/i.t./computer field that makes use of my skills that i learned in college and when i learned computer repair to become a+ certified by the computer technology industry association (called comptia for short). ideally, i would like to be a computer programmer and write software. i am not going to abandon this goal of mine, but i would not recommend anyone else having that goal unless they are very very good at programming. and, ever since i got my current job, i have made very little effort to find a better one, because all the time i was searching for a job that was in my field, i could never ever find one. now i have forgotten most of what i learned in college and my skills have faded away significantly. i am no longer fresh out of college, and still have zero work experience in my field of expertise. for the time being, keeping my current job is also a good goal to have, since my current job is far better than no job at all. it seems kind of ridiculous to try to look for a job at a time like this, when the economy is doing terribly and everyone is laying people off if their company is doing well enough to avoid completely going out of business. the company i work for seems to be doing fine and actually keeps hiring new people on a regular basis. that gives me a sense of security, and i get along quite well with my boss and co-workers. it seems a bit foolhardy to abandon the security of my current job to go out and risk finding a new one when i doubt any better ones really exist out there. there were not any better jobs for me in 2004, 2005, or 2006, nor could i find anything good in the summers of 2000, 2001, or 2002. (in the summer of 2003 i went to mexico to study spanish instead of looking for a summer job.) anyway, if nobody hires me to write software or do something else computer-y that is better than data entry, i will have no choice but to write software on my own, for profit, or go into some other sort of business venture on my own. and it will be a complete disaster since i know absolutely nothing about running a business, i am quite disorganized and messy, and i have absolutely no ideas about what i would do (like if it were a software business, what the software would actually do). i have absolutely no ideas and i know very well that most new businesses fail within the first year, so i am pretty staunchly against the idea of starting a business. that is just my last resort, if all else fails, something i would do in an act of complete desperation if i am unable to find a good job anywhere else. but, to be honest, i would rather just stay at my current job doing data entry than fuck around trying to start some stupid company that would go out of business within the first year, especially since i can’t think of any ideas on what the company would do. i mean ok, another idea besides writing software is that i could repair computers, but seriously, i do not have any suppliers or spare parts, and i am not experienced in computer repair, and i do not have anyone i know of whom i could hire. i do not have any money. and since i am completely unconvinced that i could ever start a company, i doubt i would be able to convince anyone else, especially since i am such a brutally honest person and am incapable of lying about stuff like that. so for the time being i am staying at my current job, but that does not necessarily preclude looking for other jobs, applying to them, and even maybe getting some job interviews. but to be honest, i do not even want to do any of that job-seeking bullshit, because i already know how it will turn out. i will not get the job. that is how it always ends, unless the job i am applying for is something that almost anyone can do that is barely above minimum wage. did i also mention i have never had a girlfriend and girls, like prospective employers, have likewise consistently rejected me? i do not go around asking out girls, because i do not want to be rejected again. i just hate rejection soooooooooo much. sure i would love a girlfriend more than anything. just please, somebody give me one already! a girl who is attractive, is willing to engage in premarital sex, does not have any sexually transmitted diseases, is 18 years of age or older, and is a willing partner. that is really all i want, my basic minimum requirements. being intelligent would be a plus, and having lots of money would be an even bigger plus. but i do absolutely nothing as far as asking girls out nowadays, and i have done very little of it over the course of my lifetime so far. the same could be said regarding my record of applying to jobs. in both cases, i just hate and fear rejection so much, i can’t stand it. but i am sick of being a failure in life. that is why i play video games, play with my dog, go on the internet, watch tv, and do other things that distract me from my problems. distractions are truly the great joys of life. if it were not for the things other people consider a “waste of time”, i doubt i would have any joys in life, except for incredibly minor pleasures that are barely even noticeable to me. this is the life i have because, in part, of the job situation that has been around for these many years since the end of the dot-com boom. perhaps, as some claim, there may have been a few times when there actually was a decent chance for someone to get a good job in computers some time earlier in this decade, but that would certainly have to be in some geographical area other than the one i live in, because the local economy here has been in the shitter ever since the end of the cold war. the recession of the early 90s that happened under the first president bush never really ended around here, and we have basically had a recession in this area ever since then, due to cutbacks in military spending at the end of the cold war and the downfall of the company ibm that used to provide a huge number of great computer jobs in this area but has now almost completely left this area. ibm was actually founded here, and this was its original headquarters. other major local employers from the mid-20th century had gone out of business by the end of the 20th century. to be honest, binghamton actually peaked in the 1950s, and has gone downhill ever since. it would be logical for me to relocate to another area with better job opportunities, but the one time i tried that, it did not work and i was forced to return to binghamton, and i do not have enough money to try it again. so for now i will stay at my current job, as i have been doing for 2 and a half years, hoping that at some point i work up the courage and determination to go out there and find a better job, something i do not quite feel ready for right now. i am just too unsure of myself, and have no confidence. i suppose i have always been this way. perhaps this means that waiting is a futile endeavor which accomplishes nothing except wasting more time of my life away. perhaps i ought to go back out and apply for jobs and ask girls out again. given the apocalyptic economic conditions right now, i suppose i might have better luck with the girls, since i think my social skills have improved over the years. then again, what should i do? wait until i am old before i change anything in my life or try to get a better job? that makes no sense. but then again, nothing seems to make any sense anymore. i do know one thing: oh wait, i had it a minute ago but i forgot what i was going to say. i guess that means i don’t know much of anything anymore. what? ok now i am confused. what is going on here anyway? i forget why i am typing whatever this is that i am typing. is there any point to this “blog” thing? am i just writing blog posts now and then out of some misplaced sense of obligation to at least post something on the internet now and then? and why do i repeat the same word or phrase multiple times in a sentence, or 2 sentences in a row so often? i have noticed i do that a lot in my blog posts. but i do not wish to edit them at all, because the quality of the writing is so low, and i never re-read or edit things before publishing them. it is a waste of time. it is not like i am getting paid to do this. i would rather be doing something else right now, like eating or sleeping or playing a game. mostly sleeping, since i am tired. normally playing with my dog would also be on the list, but my dog has an ear infection and is not very enthusiastic about much of anything, and just wants to sleep all the time. also, since i am tired too, just like my dog, i would rather not do that right now, maybe some other time. ok then, i will do it some other time, like later today. i am going to sleep now. probably. who knows? that is just a prediction, but you know how insomnia is and how bad i am at keeping promises about stuff i will do. or if you don’t know, i was just using a figure of speech when i said you know and i did not literally mean it. anyway, me sleep now. did you notice i say anyway a lot, and sometimes start sentences with and or end sentences with prepositions? or that i even start some sentences with or, or do not use quotation marks around words when i should, or how i type ALMOST everything in lowercase? well, the grammar in my blog may be atrocious, but i spell everything correctly, since, after all, i am a former spelling bee champion (the champion in my school district, not at any higher level). it is too bad that does not get me a beautiful girlfriend and high-paying prestigious job. the weather around here is so fricken cold, i hate it so much. florida has such nice weather compared to here. but i got bit by a spider-or-something-else in florida and now have a big inflamed area that is red and sticks out, and my dog got something-or-other in his right ear and now has an infection. i am guessing maybe sand from the beach got in his ear and clogged it up, or dirt from the backyard in florida? who knows? the shadow knows. whatEVER. anyway, go see the movie “metropolis” made in the 1920s in germany by fritz lang. it was a very high-budget movie for its time, much longer than the other black-and-white silent films of that era, and it introduced many science fiction things that have been imitated by many films and tv shows since then. it had a mad scientist, a humanoid robot, and all sorts of crazy stuff. the newest edition you can find of metropolis is a digitally remastered dvd that has very high quality picture and combines footage from various reels of the film found all across the globe, using the best-quality version of each scene and having everything computer-enhanced to look good. did-you notice-my-extra use-of-hyphens? ok enough of me making fun of my own grammar. why do i say ok so much? geez. i gotta go sleep or something now, seriously. did you notice how i say more than once that i am going but do not go? (and did you notice that i am very bad at keeping my blog posts on a single topic, and write very long posts, and my paragraphs are not exactly paragraphs in the traditional sense?) well this time i am going. bye. (incidentally, does anybody actually LIKE my writing style? if you do, you are even crazier than me.) i said BYE! now SCRAM! (ok. geez. anyway... did you notice how i just repeated geez after saying it a few sentences earlier, or how i keep asking if you noticed something? no? me neither.) SCRAM! (you just repeated scram. ok bye.) you just repeated BYE! (i am you, we are the same person.) shut up, me. (isn’t it proper to say myself instead of me?) no. go away. (no.) yes. bye.